UN Independent Commission on Syria says more than 200 deaths since ceasefire began
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The UN Human Rights Council holds country reviews regularly and many are heated, but this week in Geneva several meetings have turned up the heat under accusations of human rights abuses.
Cuba appeared before the UN Committee Against Torture Wednesday 23 May to say it has no express definition of the crime of torture but is considering one. The Miami Herald in the US, in a scathing article, describes the Cuban delegation’s appearance before the Geneva commission as a “stout defense”, with the group “denying ‘each and every’ complaint of mistreatment but delicately parsing its words when it came to other alleged abuses.”
Bahrain came in for sharp criticism during its periodic review before the Human Rights Council earlier in the week. Protesters have rallied on several occasions in the past year, with concern voiced by other governments over clashes in the streets. “Bahrain’s response – that all is well and there are no political prisoners – simply doesn’t fly,” says Juliette de Rivero, Geneva director at Human Rights Watch. “It’s time for Bahrain to stop denying the problem and take genuine steps to end the country’s human rights crisis.”
Thursday 24 May the UN’s Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria noted that more than 200 people have died since the 12 April ceasefire was to start in Syria, information based on interviews carried out in Geneva and with people in the region around Syria. The group has not been allowed to enter the country. UPI carries a lengthy story on the report.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Pope Benedict XVI will end a two-day Cuban visit on Wednesday 28 March with an open-air Mass in Revolution Square in Havana and an unscheduled meeting with former leader Fidel Castro, the Associated Press reports.
The plaza’s famous image of revolutionary leader Che Guevara now has a huge poster of the country’s patron saint, the Virgin of Charity of Cobre, opposite it. The papal visit coincides with the 400th anniversary of her apparition as a statue.
The leader of the Catholic Church met for an hour on Tuesday with Fidel’s brother, Raul Castro, the current head of state. The pope asked that Good Friday be made a national holiday. The Cuban regime agreed to reintroduce Christmas as a holiday, following the last papal visit, by John Paul II in 1998, after banning it for nearly 30 years.
Only ten percent of Cuba’s population is Catholic today and Benedict’s visit to Cuba is widely seen as an effort to improve relations between the Catholic Church and the secular socialist state and to renew the church.
Links to other sources: The Telegraph, CNN, BBC, Vatican
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Dozens of women protesting the continuous detention of political prisoners in Cuba were arrested over the weekend in Havana, just a week before Pope Benedict XVI is due to visit the island.
Thirty-six members of a group, Ladies in White, who were staging their weekly protest, were forcefully loaded into buses when they left their authorized route. This followed earlier arrests of 18 other Ladies, including their leader Berta Soler, on Saturday. Further arrests were reported in other cities.
A number of the group’s members were freed Sunday night, El Pais reports.
The weekly marches, the only authorized public protests in Cuba, commemorate the detention in 2003 of 75 political dissidents, sons and husbands of the protesters. They were freed in a 2010 agreement brokered by the Catholic church. The group has said it would like all other political prisoners to be freed.
Links to other sites: The Guardian, BBC, 20Minutos.es
The first congress held by the ruling Communist Party in Cuba in 14 years, aimed at breathing new life into the communist system has ended with some changes but not enough, critics say.
Cuba’s Communist Party selected President Raul Castro to replace his older brother Fidel Castro as first secretary of the ruling party’s Central Committee and appointed First Vice President Jose Machado Ventura, 80, as second secretary.
Fidel Castro attended the closing ceremony but did not address the meeting.
In a surprising move, Cuba will allow people to buy and sell their homes for the first time since the communist revolution in 1959. No details on how this will be done were given.
For the past 50 years, Cubans have only been allowed to pass on their homes to their children, or to swap them through a system widely viewed as complicated and often corrupt.
Raul Castro and Machado Ventura fought in Cuba’s revolution and head the aging revolutionaries who toppled US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.
Links: BBC News, Miami Herald, Agencia Cubana de Noticias (Sp)
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Fifty years ago, as tensions between the United States and Cuba grew, Switzerland was asked by the US to represent its interests in Havana, an anniversary marked by Switzerland 6 January, but quietly ignored by the two neighbouring nations whose chilly relations have thawed only slightly over the years.
It was early 1961, some 20 months before the Cuban missile crisis, when the US turned to Switzerland to represent its interests as part of neutral Switzerland’s “good offices”, which are a key aspect of Swiss foreign policy. The US had just broken off diplomatic relations with Cuba following the 1959 Cuban Revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power, replacing Fulgencio Batista, whose government had been backed by the US.
Switzerland serves as a Protecting Power, says Bern:
The Cuban government will lay off half a million state employees over the next six months, the confederation of trade unions announced 13 September in the official newspaper, Granma. The measure is being taken in order to improve efficiency in the state sector, which employs about 5 million people. The government hopes to find jobs for the laid-off state workers in the private sector, for which relaxed rules will be announced.
The news comes days after former Cuban leader Fidel Castro was quoted as saying that the Cuban system was not working.
Links to other sites: Granma (Spa), Miami Herald, San Francisco Chronicle
Title: Pablo Milanes in Geneva
Location: Geneva
Link out: Click here
Description: Cuban singer and songwriter Pablo Milanes only concert in Switzerland takes place at Victoria Hall on 8 March.
Date: 2010-03-08
Credit Suisse may pay $536 million
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse has announced it is close to an agreement with US financial regulators concerning its dealings with countries that are subject to US economic sanctions. The bank says that it has closed its representative office in Tehran, Iran as part of its own probe into the investigation by US and New York regulators.
As part of the deal Credit Suisse may pay a $536 million fine, and says it has booked a pre-tax CHF445 million provision in the current quarter.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland will lead efforts to backup a major conference that opens 29 November in Colombia, the Cartagena summit on a mine-free world. The conference marks the 10th anniversary of the Ottawa Treaty entering into force and provides the opportunity for its second review conference to assess progress and how well the convention is being respected.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Eight countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus and five in Southeast Asia are implementing early warning systems to protect against weather-related events, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Today 14 October is International Day for Disaster Reduction, and the agency is highlighting how early warning and disaster risk reduction can save many lives when extreme weather strikes. Similar projects were introduced in seven southeast European countries in 2007.
These national and regional cooperation projects are part of a concerted programme that relies on technical expertise and funding provided by the WMO, the World Bank, UNDP and the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR).
“Natural hazards are a part of life. But natural hazards only become disasters when people’s lives and livlihoods are swept away…” (Kofi Annan, World Disaster Reduction Day, 2003)
The Associated Press in the US broke a story Tuesday that a senior US official had met with Cuban officials and held unplanned talks, the first in several years – raising hopes of a thaw in relations between the two countries. Later in the day, according to CBS News, US State Department spokesperson Ian Kelly confirmed that State Department official Bisa Williams and Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Dagoberto Rodriguez met when Williams stayed on after the rest of a delegation left Cuba at the end of a 18 September programmed visit to discuss mail service.
Russia and Cuba have signed agreements to explore for oil in the North Cuba Basin of the Gulf of Mexico, with Cuba saying there could be as much as 20 billion barrels of oil, although the United States says it is more likely to be around five billion barrels. Part of the agreement is a Russian loan for $120 for equipment and technology. Cuba currently buys more than half of its oil from Venezuela. BBC, Miami Herald
The US interests section, or embassy, in Havana, Cuba has shut down the electronic billboard on its fifth floor that has streamed anti-Cuban propaganda in 1.5 metre high letters since 2006. Citing a lack of effectiveness “in delivering information to the Cuban people”, US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly confirmed that the ticker was shut off in June. When it went up, the Cuban government reacted by surrounding the interests section with billboards and hundreds of flagpoles to block the ticker. It appears that no one noticed until Kelly confirmed 27 July that it had been turned off. BBC, CNN
Cuba says it has no interest in joining the Organization of American States (OAS), but the group of 35 nations 3 June voted strongly to reverse the ban on the island nation, in place since 1962, when “the US led the push to suspend Havana at the height of the Cold War,” according to CNN. The OAS has put some strings on Cuba’s possible membership, putting in place a system that requires dialogue on human rights.
Cuba and the US have agreed to talks about improving migration from the island to the US to make it safer and more orderly. They will also discuss direct mail service between the two countries. Senior State department officials in Washington confirmed Saturday that Cuban officials have left open the possibility that future talks might include other topics, such as disaster-preparedness, counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism. US President Barack Obama earlier lifted restrictions on family visits and remittances to Cuba.
This comes as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton heads to Honduras for a meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS), where calls for Cuba’s readmission to the group will be debated. CNN, USA Today
The fifth Summit of the Americas in Trinidad kicked off with US President Barack Obama telling Cuba that the “US seeks a new beginning with Cuba” although decades of mistrust will not lead to a quick fix. Miami Herald, Xinhua
US President Barack Obama, while maintaining the trade embargo with Cuba, has eased some restrictions that particularly affect Cuban-American families: cell phone companies and television broadcasts to the island will be allowed and US citizens will be allowed to make unlimited family visits to the island and provide unlimited financial aid to their families. NPR
Three members of Congress, US Democrats, met with former Cuban President Fidel Castro after meeting with his brother Raul, who now heads the country. The Americans were part of a larger team of seven who visited the island, sparking reports that the two countries are prepared to start easing relations. Congress will consider a bill to allow US citizens to travel to Cuba, but the trade embargo, in place since 1960, is unlikely to fall soon, says a BBC reporter. But the Miami Herald, with a large Cuban expat population among its readers, was upbeat about the possibilities opened by the visit and Castro’s comments afterwards on a Cuban government web site.
The bill has not yet been signed, but US President Barack Obama is giving his support to a government funding package that earmarks a significant change in relations between the US and Cuba. The bill will ease restrictions on travel and trade, allowing Cuban-Americans to spend longer than two weeks at a time on the island and to visit once a year rather than every three years. (Ed. note: stories in US media do not make it clear if the bill will ease travel restrictions for other Americans.) Sky News
Muhammad Saad Iqbal spent six years as a US prisoner at Guantanamo in Cuba despite never being charged with or found guilty of any crime. He was a sick man, with multiple injuries, when he was sent home to Pakistan in August, released with only an explanation that he was “no longer considered an enemy combatant,” reports the International Herald Tribune, which carries a lengthy feature on his case. He is now planning to sue the US government.
Hurricane Ike has knocked down buildings in Cuba, enfeebled by the more powerful hurricane Gustav. Reuters video
